Manufacturing design and process analysis and simulation system

Abstract

A process simulation system that simulates the operation of the manufacturing and measurement systems used to produce and measure the articles being analyzed relative to engineering design targets, engineering design tolerances, producibility and/or quality. In one embodiment, the user is able to assess, without risk or production cost while accelerating speed-to-market, the effect of contemplated changes (i.) to engineering design targets, (ii.) to engineering design tolerances, (iii.) to tooling, (iv.) to part pre-process dimensions and (v.) to the measurement system—on manufactured part dimensions, producibility and quality (i.) without modifying tooling, (ii.) without changing part pre-process dimensions, (iii.) without producing new parts, (iv.) without measuring article characteristics on the new parts and (v.) without changing the measurement system. The simulation functionalities, according to embodiments of the present invention, enable the user to verify whether or not the contemplated changes will have the desired effect without incurring the time and expense involved in actually making the changes, producing parts, measuring part characteristics, changing the measurement system and then determining whether the changes accomplished the desired objectives.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to manufacturing, design, tooling, and process engineering and, in one embodiment, to methods, apparatuses and systems facilitating the design, tooling, production and / or measurement tasks associated with manufacturing and other processes. In one embodiment, the present invention relates to decision-making and logic structures, implemented in a computer software application, that facilitate all phases of the design, development, tooling, pre-production, qualification, certification, and production process of any part or other article that is produced to specification. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The world of manufacturing, including process engineering, has been under continuous and accelerating pressure to improve quality and reduce costs. This trend shows signs of further accelerating rather than decelerating. From a manufacturing perspective, quality refers to producing parts that 1.) are close to or at engineering design tar...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides methods, apparatuses and systems that facilitate the design, production and/or measurement tasks associated with manufacturing and other processes. In one embodiment, the present invention relates to decision-making and logic structures, implemented in a computer software application, facilitating all phases of the design, development, tooling, pre-production, qualification, certification, and production process of any part or other article that is produced to specification. In one embodiment, the present invention provides knowledge of how the multiple characteristics of a given process output are related to each other, to specification limits and to pre-process inputs. This knowledge facilitates a red...

Problems solved by technology

Unfortunately, many manufacturing processes act like a black box.

It can be difficult in some of these cases to determine the relationship between the process control variables and the resulting article characteristic values.

Furthermore, time and economic constraints can make such a determination impractical even when this might be technically possible.

Simple interactions, complex interactions and non-linearities complicate the situation further.

In light of the preceding, it is often extremely difficult to establish the combination of factors from the large number of part design targets, part tolerance limits, mold design characteristics and injection molding press settings that produces acceptable articles.

Unfortunately, even after performing a designed experiment, there are still a large number of control variables that can affect the resulting articles.

Measuring the parts, recording and analyzing the data, and reporting the results, however, is a very expensive and resource consuming process.

If such abnorm...

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